foraging!

[kaberett]

A couple of weeks ago now, A dropped me off at the allotment, on his way into town to pick up meds from the pharmacy.

On his way back up the hill, he paused to send me some photographs, captioned "What sort of tree is this? I don't think I've ever seen seed pods quite like these..."

"Oh!" sez I, "Those are cob nuts! We can eat them if you like."

By the time I replied (my hands having been full of snail) he'd already wandered on without them, and so on that day no cobnuts were consumed, at least by us.

Today, however! Today, on our way back from a Terrible Date Activity (i.e. ongoing active participation in the ZOE study), A took us on a detour via the tree in question. In fairly short order, we filled a carrier bag nuts in their wee hats, and then continued on to the allotment, where I separated the nuts from said hats in order to feed the hats directly to the compost bin.

(Trees for Life asserts that "The English name for the tree and its nut is derived from the Anglo-Saxon haesel knut, haesel meaning cap or hat, thus referring to the cap of leaves on the nut on the tree." -- but I have not actually tried terribly hard to track that down, yet, because it is past my bedtime.)

This evening, after a lot of faffing around with a mortar and pestle, we eventually had them -- all half-a-small-bowl of them -- for dinner (with Cosse Violette beans from the allotment, and a cheese-and-onion quiche with allotment-onions, and boiled wee potatoes and half a large carrot each, and thyme and -- for me -- parsley).

Personally I am very much of the opinion that they are Not, in and of themselves, Worth The Faff -- but I was and indeed am definitely enthusiastic about encouraging A in Foraging Behaviours.

However, having demonstrated that these oddly tentacular seed pods are food, I am glad to report that he, too, considers them Not Worth The Faff. I am nonetheless delighted that we've now conducted this experiment, however, and am immensely looking forward to the day when I can drag A into Waitrose during cobnut season and show him just how much they charge by weight for fancy hazelnuts still with their horrible little hats on...

Comments

[rugessnome]

oh oh! I love hazelnuts but I don't think I've ever seen them growing (nor knew they're also called cob nuts).

what we get growing around here are mostly hickory nuts (with which I have very little experience) and black walnuts (which I like better than the Persian variety)

[kaberett]

I really need to go to bed but I am intending tomorrow to upload a screenshot of the relevant bit of chatlog, on the basis that I am consistently delighted by A's curiosity and wonder and therefore I Am Going To Show Him Off. :D

[petrea_mitchell]

I also didn't know they were called cob nuts. In my part of the US, where they're grown commercially, they're hazelnuts, but I understand that in a lot of the US they're filberts.

I had to look up images of Waitrose cob nuts to see what you meant by still with their hats on. Around here, if you buy a bag of them, you get just the nuts themselves, unless you're buying chocolate- or candy-coated ones.

[rugessnome]

ah—I looked up that same phrase and while around holiday time we, with any luck, get in-shell hazelnuts (which I assume is not what you mean the way you've phrased the coatings bit), I've never seen them with the outer ...husk? hat thing still on.

(now I wonder if that part of hazelnuts has a smell; the bright chartreuse brown-staining hulls of black walnuts have a distinct scent and it's very homey for me... but of course that needn't translate to very different nuts and that they grow 'round here is the only reason I know that; I don't think I've even seen them in shells in store)

[roadrunnertwice]

Aw, I love hazelnuts 😄 good in trail mix, good chopped into oatmeal. But they’ve definitely got a weird vegetably note, I can see how they’d be controversial.

[ewt]

They are a lot of faff! I tend to err on the side of "not worth it unless they are particularly big".

[oracne]

Food science!

[macey]

the house we rented when in Luxembourg had, alongside the giant cherry and half-dozen plum/pear/apple orchard, an entire garden hedgerow of mixed cobb and hazel nuts. I do miss that garden. (But yes, Very Faff.)

[sfred]

Yay for nuts and yay for consensus on tolerable quantity of faff.

[khronos_keeper]

Ooooh I love wild food foraging. My landlords have been giving me paw paw fruit from the trees in their yard, which taste far too much like a tropical fruit for something that grows in frozen new york.

speaking of anglo saxons and hazel nuts, you've reminded me of a recipe jonathan boakes (an indie game dev) he included in a game about saxon ghost kings. It's a chicken stew called seven bird stew, and has chicken, bacon, mushrooms, garlic, chives, and hazelnuts. Surprisingly delicious!

[ludy]

Cobnuts are specifically green hazelnuts so you can (not necessarily should, particularly in quantity!) break through the shells/coating with your nails or teeth. In the UK - particularly in areas near Kent which is famous for its cobnuts - they are sold literally as they come off the tree with bits of twig and the "horrible hats".
By the time they are mature hazelnuts (the sort you need a nutcracker to open) they are usually sold out of their shells but even in-shell mature nuts (which are generally sold as a Christmas thing for some reason) are cleaned up a bit before sale

[madgastronomer]

I had never heard cob nuts, either. It took me a couple of days to connect the information that haesel means cap with the fact that cob means head.